One down, twenty six to go

Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of my being in the Peace Corps’ loving clutches. It’s been one hell of a month. I’m now about halfway through training, and I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been a little hard. We put in some seriously long days. About 5 hours of Kiswahili class five days a week, followed by teaching training in the afternoon. Just recently we’ve started teaching at internship schools as well. We then have safety and health training (with a few vaccinations thrown in for good measure… by the end of training we’re vaccinated against 15 different nasty diseases) all day on Saturdays. I’m really looking forward to being on site and having more than just a few hours a week to stop and breathe.

Due to popular demand, here are some pictures of my home stay. Here’s my bedroom. Note the handy mosquito net (no malaria for me thanks!) and the lantern (Tanzanian electricity is unreliable at best).



Here’s a photo of Baraka (which in Swahili means “in faith”), one of the little boys who lives in the house. He’s about 2 years old and is an absolute blast to have around. Aside from just being entertaining, he’s also a walking dictionary. He speaks no English, naturally, but all I have to do is point at something and he’ll bust out the (I hope) appropriate Kiswahili word. He follows me around the house all the time. Occasionally I’ll try to wow him with one of the amateur magic tricks I learned from a friend at college, and he seems to let it go whenever I mess up (which is most of the time). He’s a great kid all around.



Here’s a photo from just down the road from where I’m staying. They are the best of friends:




All in all I’m having a great home stay experience. My family is very patient with my Swahili, and they are teaching me a whole lot about how to cook here, (which’ll be damn important in about 4 ½ weeks). This past Sunday I cooked grilled cheese and egg sandwiches for the whole family. They absolutely loved it. I’m not a good cook by any stretch of the imagination, but with enough butter any grilled sandwich is mind-blowingly tasty. Here’s a shot of the shack where we cook and store food and chickens. Those are orange trees next to the building. Oddly enough, the oranges here are green. They taste exactly like American oranges… they’re just green. They’re still called oranges though. Even in Swahili, the word for the orange fruit and the color orange are the same. Go figure…



Speaking of chickens…. in the afternoon this past Sunday I was given the task of butchering one of our roosters. This was the first time I’d ever killed something I was about to eat, so I was a little nervous. My home stay brother (named Jonas) and I carried the bird out around the side of the shack and held it down. This was no small rooster. Easily bigger than Baraka, it was damn hefty. We stood on its wings and feet, and then I was given the knife. At this point most of the family gathered around, clearly amused by the clueless mzungu (means white person) and hapless kuku (means chicken). I was shown where to cut, and after bringing the knife down it was abundantly obvious that the knife was really really dull. We’re talking butter knife dull. The next 30 seconds were not particularly pleasant. I had to use most of my strength to saw the bird’s head off. The poor kuku really did not have a good day. Also interesting was how long it took to die. It must have taken a good 1 or 2 minutes after the head came off. Not pretty. After this we took it to the shack where we plucked its feathers, cut it up, and tossed it in a pot. While I managed to come out of the experience surprisingly unscathed, I’ve definitely gained a new appreciation for what goes into preparing meat.



While I’m on the death theme, I’ll throw in this picture just because I like it. There are many old graveyards in Morogoro, and this one is particularly striking:



All in all though, life right now is good. I’ve finally gotten into a nice rhythm with training, my Swahili is coming along well, and every day I get to walk for more than an hour amidst truly breathtaking views of the mountains and the countryside. Aside from the occasional stomach affliction and painfully hot afternoons, I really can’t complain at all. Hope everyone at home is doing well. Kwa heri na siku njema. (Take care and have a great day.)